Avengers of Blood

by Gae-Lynn Woods

  The shooter checked that the curtains were drawn before turning on a lamp in the musty living room. He then pried a loose flagstone from the hearth and extracted his laptop. While the machine started up, he headed into the kitchen, lit a gas burner on the stove, and placed a kettle on the hotplate. A wry smile crossed his lips at the irony of his actions, and he opened a cupboard door and drew down a heavy ceramic mug and tin of instant decaf coffee. While he craved a caffeine kick, he would have to show up to work in only a few hours. Decaf it was. He poured boiling water over the dark crystals, added milk and three spoons of sugar, and stirred the tan liquid with quick flicks of his wrist.

  Coffee made, he headed to the living room and started at the black cat grooming its whiskers against his laptop’s screen. The cat seemed to have a mysterious portal that allowed it to appear and disappear inside the house. The shooter never knew when it – a supposed female given the name ‘Sheba’ on its tag – would turn up. Sheba never bothered him or begged. Instead, she watched with inscrutable golden eyes as he worked, showered, cooked. One minute she was there, the next gone. He had searched the house’s exterior and found no way for the cat to enter. He supposed she must have a secret entrance through a hole in the attic or perhaps a tear in the mesh protecting the latticework over the crawl space. His only complaint was the shedding, but a quick swipe with a tape brush took care of that problem.

  He shooed Sheba away. She stretched and hopped onto the couch, curling in on herself. He fired up his wireless internet access card and sat in the soft chair by the window, propping the laptop on a pillow in his lap to catch the faint satellite signal, then opened the GPS tracking program. Moses Franklin and Donna Moore’s cars were right where he expected them to be – still parked at their houses. Although Moses and Moore were Satan’s business now, he left the trackers active in case he decided to retrieve them. Emmet Hedder’s truck, on the other hand, was moving. The shooter sipped his coffee and watched as the GPS system updated. Finally, the little dot stopped outside Arcadia’s city limits. He jotted an address on a scrap of paper, then shut the computer down. He slipped the equipment into its hiding place and headed to bed, praying for deep sleep. The charade at work would start in a few hours, and the day wouldn’t end until the evening’s stalking and killing was complete. Although Emmet Hedder had no way to see him coming, the former Marine would be on high alert, adding a thrill to this chase. Through his weariness, the shooter smiled.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE SUN WAS ALREADY up as Joseph Franklin thanked the officer driving the patrol car and said that he wouldn’t need protection any longer. When the driver protested, Joseph thanked him again and said that he would clear it with Sheriff Hoffner. The young officer looked doubtful but drove off, probably grateful to be released from baby-sitting duty.

  Joseph stood on the sidewalk, feeling sweat pop out on his skin. He was wearing the same t-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes he’d worn last night, clean from their run through the laundry at Porky and Stella’s. Today, he needed to get into Moses’ closet and figure out what a cop wore when he was off-duty. Something lightweight, hopefully. It was barely six o’clock and the temperature was already touching seventy-eight degrees. Considering that it was early May and technically still spring, things did not bode well for East Texas this summer.

  As he looked at his mother’s home, Joseph realized that the lawn needed mowing and her adored roses a good watering, and his heart ached. He trudged up the path to the porch and reached for the clipboard held out for him by the sweat-slicked patrol officer. He was a slight man, easily six inches shorter than Joseph, with fair skin, thinning hair, and a problem with acne. Joseph read his expression as a combination of pity and wariness. He’d probably heard how Joseph had blasted through the police perimeter to get inside the house last night and was wondering if the big man would give him problems today. Joseph looked down at the paper on the clipboard. It was a crime scene log with signatures in one column. He signed with his indecipherable scrawl, wondered briefly what Moses’ signature looked like, and handed the clipboard back, realizing that his decision to be Moses could not be undone.

  Here we go, Joseph thought. The rubber meets the hot ol’ road, boy, and we find out how well you knew your twin.

  He moved to lift the yellow tape wrapped around the front porch and the officer cleared his throat. “Sorry, Mojo, but I have to go in with you.” He shrugged, the thin material of his summer uniform sighing with the motion. “Procedure.”

  Joseph lowered his gaze and caught sight of the officer’s badge. Petchard. He rolled the name around silently and at last it registered in his memory. Officer Hugo Petchard had been the man allegedly working undercover to find child molesters that were part of a cult. The whole thing exploded just before Joseph arrived back in Arcadia, and the fallout was bad. Several people had died and the police department received serious flack from the regional and even the national media – until the next big story came along a couple of days later. Moses told Joseph that he wasn’t sure the Sheriff would recover from all the negative publicity. He also confided that he didn’t think Petchard’s role in the whole affair held water, and he had actively stayed away from the younger officer to avoid becoming tainted with the man’s stink.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Joseph answered.

  Petchard lifted the tape and moved aside, letting Joseph duck under first. Joseph’s hand hovered for a moment before he grabbed the brass knob, twisted, and pushed past the stubborn spot in the door frame. The coppery smell of death stung as he drew his first breath inside the house, bringing involuntary tears to his eyes. He blinked them back and turned to Petchard. “I need to change clothes and pack some things. Is that okay?”

  Petchard stepped into the entrance hall, flinched at the smell, and retreated to the porch. “I’ll wait here. Give you some privacy.”

  The door closed, leaving Joseph alone in the dimly lit foyer. His memory of the previous night’s events had morphed into a surrealist image of the violence that had torn his life apart. It tugged at him, pulling him silently across the small space and down the short hall. Using only his fingertips, he pushed through the swinging door and stopped. From this position, looking straight across the kitchen, past the dining table and out the large window into the backyard, Joseph could imagine that nothing had changed. It was only when he focused his gaze that he spotted the small holes in the window, their stress fractures radiating outward like crazed rays from some aberrant sun.

  He stepped inside and turned his head to take in the darkened pool of blood on the floor and the spatter covering the stove and wall. Someone had moved the kettle from the stovetop and a patch of white was visible; a void in the space behind the kettle and up onto the stove’s control panel. The backsplash was covered with blood spray and bits of bone and tissue. He leaned closer and looked through the gore at the tiles. The head of his mother’s beloved rooster was shattered and the bullet’s impact had forced cracks into several surrounding tiles. A vision of his mother and Moses’ lifeless bodies flashed across his brain. A surge of bile seared his esophagus and Joseph squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing convulsively until the bitter, burning taste receded. He stepped out of the kitchen, forcing images of them in life into his thoughts.

  Joseph walked to his bedroom and opened the door. Everything was as he had left it when he went to play ball last night: his desk, its surface bare; cell phone, wallet, and his brother’s car keys on the dresser by the window; bed crisply made and clothes folded on the seat of an old rocker in the corner. He grabbed the keys, phone, and wallet and slipped them into his pockets, then opened his closet to extract a duffel bag and clothes. A creak sounded from within the house and his massive hands, full of shirts, stopped, suspended over the duffel. An expression of surprise crossed his face. He was being Joseph.

  But Joseph was dead.

  In this hideous new reality, only Moses was alive.

  He turned and glanced at his open bedroom door. N
o one. Quietly, he returned the clothes to their drawers and hangers, and put the duffel away. He placed the cell phone and wallet on his dresser, but kept the car keys since he had borrowed Moses’ car yesterday, leaving Moses to use their mother’s car. He walked across the hall to Moses’ room. The light scent of his brother’s cologne hit him as Joseph opened the door and he gave in to the rush of grief, stumbling forward and crumpling onto the unmade bed. Bracing his elbows on his knees, Joseph buried his face in his hands and let the hot tears burn a trail down his face.

  Quick footsteps stopped at the open door.

  “Oh,” Petchard said, eyes wide as he took in Joseph’s tear-stained face. “Sorry, man. I heard a noise. I’ll, uh, go wait outside. Take your time.”

  As Petchard retreated, Joseph quieted his breathing. He lifted the tail of his t-shirt to wipe his nose and eyes and had to stifle a reluctant chuckle at the sight of his brother’s room. In contrast to Joseph’s tendencies toward utilitarianism, Moses’ bedroom was always cluttered. The desktop was covered in papers, and a pile of clean clothes was heaped on a chair. The bed itself was a tangle of sheets. A forest of used coffee cups sprouted from the bedside table, and Joseph lifted a leather wallet gingerly from between them. His brother’s grinning face stared at him from the driver’s license, a sharp stab in the heart. The wallet held thirty-seven dollars and three blank checks from Moses’ bank account. Plastic cards were slipped haphazardly into slots. Joseph extracted them and examined the little rectangles that represented his brother’s financial life: health insurance; a blank card that must be an electronic key to the police station; grocery store loyalty card; his Forney County Police ID; one debit / ATM card from a local bank; and two credit cards from national banks. Joseph had hacked each in his time, and he wondered if his brother’s account information had been compromised thanks to his nefarious activities. Too late to dwell on that now. He turned the cards over and smiled at Moses’ signature; a meaningless scrawl, impressively similar to his own.

  Business cards were packed in one end of Moses’ wallet. Joseph tugged them free and spilled the pile onto the bed. He started to shuffle them together when a startled breath caught in his throat. He used one finger to pull a photo from the stack. It was a shot of Moses with a white woman unfamiliar to Joseph. She was small, very short, and thin. Petite, they called it. Her hair was dark and thick, her skin luminous and pale as the moon. The woman and Moses were standing side by side, their arms wrapped around each other. To this degree, the photo didn’t surprise Joseph. Moses was the touchy-feely of the two brothers, hugging and patting freely, which was one reason people responded to him so easily. No, this proximity between the white woman and Moses wouldn’t have caused him alarm if it hadn’t been for the looks on their faces. They were gazing at one another, Moses looking down and the white woman looking up, their expressions intimate and full of joy.

  “Oh, Moses,” Joseph whispered. “What did you get into?”

  CHAPTER 22

  CASS PUSHED OPEN THE door to The Golden Gate Café and felt a physical wave of relief wash through her. Same mouth-watering smell of coffee and maple syrup. Same lawyers arguing at the same table in the same corner. Wallace and Wilbur Pettigrew almost motionless in their customary booth. A singer crooning bad country from the jukebox. Cass was in her regular uniform of button down blouse, Dockers, and cowboy boots, and her thick red hair was pulled back in a French twist. The only things missing were her gun and badge. She was exhausted from the physical labor of removing the kitchen cabinets yesterday, her late night working, and the early run this morning, but a small sigh of pleasure escaped her.

  Almost all was right with the world.

  Heads swiveled in her direction. She lifted her chin and, same as always, waved her folded newspaper at the lawyers and the Pettigrew brothers. The lawyers nodded in reply. Something that might’ve passed for a smile touched the weathered faces of the Pettigrew men.

  She crossed the café and slipped into the burgundy vinyl booth she and Mitch had used so frequently over the years she was sure their butt-grooves were worn in the soft seats. It tugged at her heart to sit here alone, with no Mitch grinning at her, waiting for his double-helping of pancakes. But she opened the Dallas paper and spread it across the table as usual, skimming the crime reports. There was nothing that resembled the details of her rape six years ago. Quick footsteps sounded across the linoleum floor and Cass looked up with a smile that vanished when she realized that it wasn’t Stan or Sally Overheart, the owners, who had come to take her order.

  The woman who stood beside Cass’s table was taller than Cass, close to six feet, and wore her dark hair short and her make-up skillfully applied. Her face was angular, her mouth wide, her painted lips full. Fine lines webbed from her tired eyes, but her aura was of youth. A soft blue scarf was tied at her neck and she sported jeans and a black shirt that exposed a narrow strip of creamy flat stomach.

  “Oh,” she said, stepping back from the table. Her voice was soft and husky. “I was expecting someone else.”

  Cass blanched at the thought that a stranger had appropriated her booth. “I haven’t been in for a while, but I usually – I mean me and my partner, used to eat here in the mornings.”

  “The person I expected usually isn’t in until later. But nobody sits here,” she glanced around toward the kitchen, “maybe because it’s so far in the back. So when I saw someone, I assumed it was my other customer coming in early.” She lifted her order pad and smiled. “What can I get for you?”

  Skinny Stan Overheart bustled from the kitchen carrying several plates. He placed them in front of the Pettigrew brothers, who pointed in Cass’s direction. Stan turned with a jerk and twisted quickly between the flock of empty tables crowding the floor before sliding into the booth across from Cass and taking both of her hands in his. “How are you?”

  “Hey Stan,” Cass croaked, and her eyes burned with tears. She cracked a watery smile at the faded skull tattoo peeking from beneath the sleeve of Stan’s Grateful Dead t-shirt, and the tiger rippling down his hairy forearm. Both felt like home. Cass pulled a napkin from the dispenser and blew her nose, struggling to loosen the knot in her throat and the tightness in her chest.

  The waitress moved away to greet a new set of customers. Stan tossed his silvery ponytail over his shoulder, patted her hands, and sat back in the booth. “We’ve missed you,” he said, motioning to his wife, Sally.

  She bustled over with a tray of steaming coffee mugs and plopped two down on the table, then reached out a bony hand and stroked Cass’s cheek. “You haven’t been in since that horrible business with those church people. Don’t stay away so long next time, you hear?”

  Cass nodded and reached for another napkin as Sally moved on to the table of new customers. “Don’t know why I’m such a crybaby today. Sorry.”

  Stan snorted. “It’s that jerk, Hoffner’s fault. Anybody who’s lived with so much uncertainty over the last six weeks, eight hours, and,” he glanced at the clock over the cash register, “twenty-three minutes, give or take, is bound to be a little frayed around the edges.”

  She chuckled. “I thought I was the only one keeping count.”

  “It’s not just me. You’d be surprised how many people are pissed that Hoffner’s taken so long to bring you back. Is this your first day?”

  “Yeah, but technically, I’m working for John Grey as a temp at the ME’s office.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup.”

  Stan grinned. “Stickin’ it to the man. I can dig it.”

  Cass grinned back. Stan and Sally Overheart were aging hippies and loved nothing more than the chance to fight the establishment, especially in small ways. The country singer’s voice died and the liquid bass line from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” oozed from the jukebox.

  “Did I ever tell you that Herbie Flowers is playing upright bass and bass guitar on this track?” Stan asked.

  “I think you left that part out of my music
al education.”

  “He overdubbed the bass guitar. It’s brilliant, and so subtle.” His eyes closed and his head bobbed in time until Reed started to sing. “Are you working the Franklin case?”

  She nodded.

  His eyes opened. “I saw it in the paper, and some officers who stopped in for coffee were talking about it. It’s terrible. And that man at the gas station.” He shuddered. “Was it as bad as it sounds?”

  The phantom odor of burned flesh hit her nostrils along with an image of Whitehead’s blackened, contorted body. “I imagine so.”

  “With all this going on, it’s good that you’re back.” Stan patted her hand again. “I’ll get you some breakfast. What do you want?”

  “Fruit and yogurt. A little granola if Sally has any.”

  “You’re too skinny,” Stan stated, eyeing her. “You can have eggs, turkey bacon, nine-grain toast, and a whole wheat pancake.” Cass started to protest but Stan held up a hand. “Sally’s testing a new recipe, so you’re obligated.”

  Cass stopped him as he slid from the booth. “Who’s the chick?”